11 years ago today: Miguel Ángel "Junito" Cotto Vázquez vs. Antonio "Tornado" Margarito Montiel II

This content is protected

Talk about night and day, between a pair of encounters. Lots of difference made by the passage of 3½ years - as well as the Mexican copping two severe beatings (from Mosley & Pacquiao) and perhaps the subtraction of a competitive advantage when stopping the Puerto Rican in 2008.

Some have argued, both contemporarily and since, that Margarito "was on the verge of rallying to stop Cotto late" - stuff & nonsense. Here's the official night-of RBR, and there wasn't a peep of it not being a shutout through nine:
https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...argarito-ii-full-undercard-rbr.364379/page-99

Marg was known for his slow-burn approach, giving away early rounds and coming on late - but that wasn't really in play here. Obviously it very much was in '08, but Cotto rewrote the script in '11. Most unofficial scorecards have it either 90-81 or 89-82, and with the latter the round likeliest to be given to Margarito is the 5th (as Harold Lederman did), not the 9th or 8th.

 

...not a single **** given.

 

The possibility of tampered gloves in 2008 is something we are just never going to get a clear definitive answer on (sort of like whether Floyd was rehydrating or masking PED use with his intravenous TUE). As you're probably well aware, the reason a lot of people think cheating did occur is that after Naazim Richardson exposed the plaster of paris like substance that Capetillo was unequivocally guilty of employing ahead of the Mosley fight (whether Margarito himself knew about his trainer's actions is, again, just one of those things we'll never know conclusively) they went back and looked at photos taken of Margarito's hand wraps after Cotto I and noticed the same red dye stains consistent with how they looked for Marg vs. Mosley before his hands were re-wrapped.

So that much we can call a "maybe it was this, maybe it was that", agree to disagree type of thing.

Most of the rest of your points are very valid - Cotto did opportunistically pick at the bones of a Margarito that had been decimated by SSM & Pac. He is a bit of a cowardly cripple-killer (like you, I'm a big Maravilla stan and hate how that went down between them).

There is also an element of truth to Margarito doing enough effectively in their first engagement - walking through counters and wearing Cotto down to grind him to a stoppage late, with his stamina waxing as Cotto's waned - to suggest that the outcome would be the same whether plaster of paris was a factor or not.

However, this part is just objectively not true:

"Also, the rematch was starting to head in the exact same direction. How convenient the fight was stopped right when Margarito was getting in a groove."

The ninth was a dominant, clear 10-9 for Cotto. Sure, it was around the same time as when Cotto fell apart in their first meeting - but Cotto after 9 rounds in 2011 wasn't the same as Cotto after 9 rounds in 2008 (much fresher, in the zone) and Margarito after 9 rounds in 2011 wasn't the same as Margarito after 9 rounds in 2008. Saying he was about to come on and seize momentum - just because the book on him is that he's a slow-starter/late-finisher and Cotto is the opposite - is conjectural. Nothing in those last few completed rounds suggested anything like that was taking shape. He was a blinded, beaten wreck, reduced to a high volume of feathery flurries with little getting through and nothing affecting Cotto, who kept landing flush counters until the bell to end the 9th.

 

Which were the pettier and more childish flame wars would you say in that "middle Internet" era (2008-2012ish) ...P.R. vs. Mexico or Floyd fanatics vs. Pac partisans?

Neck & neck, I'd say.

(of course none hold a candle to TKO6, which I believe led to posters making death threats against each other before my time here )

 

Do you mean had Margarito not come in damage goods with a preexisting ****ed-up eye, or had it not been stopped between the 9th and 10th because of his eye? Because the former sentiment I can get behind, but not the latter. Margarito wasn't doing jack **** in the last three rounds of the contest on this night. He was doing zero effective work in rounds 7, 8, and 9 to imply that he was mounting some great epic comeback.

 

Slowing yeah but there's zero chance anybody in a vacuum would watch the ninth round and say "I think the shorter guy's gassing and the big fella with the swollen labia orbital bone area whirring his hands around at random with little to no snap is likely to make a turnaround and stop him soon". It was still an extraordinarily clear 10-9.